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Back in April I blogged about Charles Murray’s Commentary article in which he theorizes about the sources of the supposed above-average intelligence of Jews. His reasoning seemed dubious to me and, judging from the letters in Commentary, I wasn’t alone.

One of the more scathing critiques comes from Columbia University’s Patricia Williams and Robert Pollack. To Murray’s citation of the disproportionate number of Jewish Nobel Prize winners they write:

Consider that women comprise some 50 percent of the worldâ€™s population, but fewer than 5 percent of Nobel Prize winners (one of Mr. Murrayâ€™s favorite metrics). Sweden, with only one tenth of a percent of the worldâ€™s population, has contributed approximately 5 percent of Nobel laureates. Are Swedes therefore smarter than women? The United States has 5 percent of the worldâ€™s population and 21 percent of Nobel winners. Are Americans smarter than Swedes but far less smart than Jews, who while constituting a fraction of a percent of the worldâ€™s population can boast of 30 percent of Nobel laureates since 1950?